For gate driving of large power train components, such as power mosfets, a number of solutions are known in the art. For example a number of different integrated circuits exists that are suitable for this purpose. These devices are expensive, and have specific properties, so that they are not interchangeable. This means that when a particular type of integrated circuit from a particular vendor has been selected for an application it cannot easily be replaced by another type of integrated circuit.
Drive circuits based on bipolar transistors are also known. Such drive circuits are known to be more complex to achieve the same result.
There is a desire to achieve a negative voltage on the gate of the transistor that drives the output signal to saturate it completely. In the prior art solutions based on bipolar transistors or integrated circuits this is achieved by adding an additional voltage source for providing the negative voltage, or using inverted driving stages in common emitter style, which results in a more complex design.